Just started creating my own I.F. after playing it for decades. There is a lot of good advice here. One thing I would personally take caution on is the room descriptions. Yes a more descriptive interpretation is good to fire the imagination, but for me I hate descriptions that go on and on for many sentences with irrelevant information. I definitely want to feel like I am IN the scene but I am here to solve a puzzle, not read a novel. When I see a long paragraph come up, unless something exciting just happened, I think UGH, I have to read through all this. I guess there's just a fine line between sparse boring descriptions and long winded descriptions.

Sort of on that point, I DO like objects worked into the description as opposed to an appended "Also here is a bell cord".

shauneq wrote:Sort of on that point, I DO like objects worked into the description as opposed to an appended "Also here is a bell cord".

The objects listed in the appended "Also here is a bell cord" will be dynamic objects that the PC can pick up and manipulate. Objects "worked into the description" are usually scenery (i.e. static) objects which the PC can examine or read, etc, but they cannot usually pick up.

The Axe of Kolt, The Spectre of Castle Coris, The Fortress of Fear, Die Feuerfaust, The Lost Children, Run, Bronwynn, Run, The Call of the Shaman, The Lost Labyrinth of Lazaitch, Magnetic Moon, Starship Quest, Revenge of the Space Pirates

I guess almost most of us came into designing how to make text adventures by finding out while playing them first. There is a wide list of quite annoying works out there which I tried to play. Basically if I hadn't dropped so many of them do to various reasons that made them unplayable I would know quite less of what to avoid on my own. So they did help me in some way. The worst of ALL things to me is having to guess the EXACT command for doing something. No alliases. THAT'S lazy. You can't even tell what's there for show and what not.

Miss the past I used to hateHate the present I should loveFear the future I should braveand shut up, cats are cool.

In the bad old days many games would make life difficult by putting objects needed to solve a problem miles away from where the problem was, despite all logic - say, putting a boat in the middle of a desert. Or, for example, it might be fun to have a four-discs tower of Hanoi puzzle in a game. But not an eight-discs one.

This one is common in Resident Evil and Fatal Frame games. I have to disagree, because for me, it makes the game more challenging. Such as, having to traverse an area you do know it's dangerous to get the required item to solve a riddle keeps me on my toes, ready for whatever happens.Instead, I would avoid a "Protect a brainless character scenario", such as protecting Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4. I'll not count protect Tracer in the omnic uprising(Overwatch) because who plays as her can be effective and independent.It's okay to protect a character, as long as he/she has a good AI